BRADFORD, Vt. — A family is mourning the loss of their home, pets and belongings following a fire at a South Pleasant Street residence early Wednesday morning.
Ten-year-old Lillie Kelley awoke shortly before 4 a.m. on Wednesday to the smell of smoke. She alerted her parents, Linsey Taylor and Craig Kelley, and 6-year-old sister Leslie-Mae Kelley. The family was able to escape out the parents’ first-floor bedroom window before flames consumed the home at 240 S. Pleasant St. A 22-year-old tenant living in an attached apartment also was able to make it to safety.
But the family dog Dabby could not be saved.
“That’s been the hardest,” 33-year-old Taylor said on Thursday. “She rescued my life after my dad passed. I couldn’t rescue hers.”
Firefighters found 2-year-old Dabby in one of the girl’s rooms, dead of smoke inhalation. The family also lost a cat in the blaze, as well as all their belongings, including family photographs and new furniture they were collecting in advance of a planned move next month.
After Taylor’s father Bryan Taylor died of cancer in 2016, she was deeply depressed and struggled to care for her daughters. She credits Dabby with pulling her out of that depression.
“I knew I had to get up and take care of her,” Taylor said. “She was my best friend.”
Also lost in the blaze were an urn containing Bryan Taylor’s ashes, pillows his widow Tina Taylor — the property’s owner — had made from his old shirts for the girls and Tina Taylor’s wedding band.
“I’m just devastated,” Tina Taylor said.
The cause of the fire is under investigation, but the Taylors said they suspect it was caused by faulty wiring. The Fire & Explosion Investigation Unit of the Vermont Department of Public Safety said in a Thursday news release that the fire doesn’t appear to be suspicious, but the investigation into the cause remains ongoing. The home did not have working smoke or carbon monoxide alarms at the time of the fire.
State police said the house was built in the 1800s and had a small, attached barn that had been converted into the apartment. The house and the apartment were destroyed. On Thursday, Tina Taylor and some of her relatives were working to recover belongings from a garage on-site.
In the wake of the fire, the Red Cross gave Linsey Taylor and Craig Kelley a housing voucher they’re using to stay at Lake Morey Resort in Fairlee. They want to stay close to Bradford because the girls are due to return to school at Bradford Elementary next week, Linsey Taylor said.
Linsey Taylor already has arranged for the girls to have counseling. Lillie has had trouble sleeping since the fire and Leslie-Mae asked her mother when the family would be going home. When her mother explained that they wouldn’t, she asked if they were homeless, Linsey Taylor said.
Community members have been gathering clothes for the family, but Linsey Taylor said they have enough.
“We don’t really have anywhere to put it right now,” she said.
The tenant, Jake Nilsson, a 22-year-old who works with Kelley at Un-Dun, a West Lebanon tobacco, beer and novelty shop, has moved in with his mother, Michele Nilsson, in Quechee until he can find another place to live, she said. Nilsson also lost all his belongings in the blaze, his mother said.
Linsey Taylor and Kelley expect to close on their new home on Sept. 6. They’re still working out where they will stay until then.
Though it’s hard to see a silver lining to the situation, Linsey Taylor said, “We’re trying to be positive (and) look at it as a fresh start.”
The home, originally built in 1834, had been in the Taylor family since Linsey Taylor’s grandparents purchased it when Bryan Taylor was a toddler. Linsey Taylor grew up there. She and Kelley thought about buying it from her mother but decided not to because she felt it held too many memories of her dad.
They “thought a fresh start would help the healing process,” she said.
With the family’s planned move next month, Tina Taylor had listed the property — which town records indicate has an assessed value of $236,700 — and recently had begun showing it to prospective buyers. Though Tina said she was ready to close that chapter of her life, it was “so bad it had to happen this way.”
But, she said, “I’m glad somebody else didn’t get it and start out that way.”
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
